In the Department of Defense (DOD) community, security policies govern the protection and handling of classified information. These policies can be found in such documented procedures as the DoD Information Technology Security Certification & Accreditation Process (DITSCAP) and the Director of Central Intelligence Directive (DCID) 6/3. Trusted operating systems that use an enhanced data access control system (like Trusted Solaris or Trusted Linux) electronically “tag” data with a classification label, sometimes referred to as a classification level. (The terms “level” and “label” will be used interchangeably herein.) This label is used to control access to data and files, limiting access to only those users specifically authorized.
In the intelligence community, proper labeling of classified information is very important. The method to achieve proper labeling is complex and therefore a language format was created by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). This format is known as Compartmented Mode Workstation (CMW) Labeling: Encoding Format (Release 2.2). This format was released from MITRE along with an accompanying software suite, MITRE CMW Labeling Software R2.2.1, which provides a bi-directional method to convert human-readable labels in the above-mentioned Encoding Format to an internal CMW representation. This software handles encodings for sensitivity labels, information labels, clearances, channels, print banners, and accreditation ranges. The internal CMW format is used to describe a machine that meets the DoD CMW Evaluation Criteria (DDS-2600-6243-92). The CMW systems use the internal CMW representation natively for security decisions. The internal CMW format consists of two main components: Classification and Compartments (“Need to Know”). The classification is an integer value and the compartments are a list (or array) of members containing at least 64 entries.
On the other hand, Security Enhanced Linux (SELinux) is a mandatory access control (MAC) technology from the National Security Agency (NSA) that is integrated in the Linux Kernel. Both SELinux and CMW technologies rely on a MAC framework to provide strong security. SELinux is a policy driven technology, i.e. a single policy defines all of the interactions on the system. The SELinux representation of sensitivity labels is defined in the policy configuration.
Unfortunately, no technique exists for readily translating from the internal CMW representation, as defined by the CMW Labeling Software, to a SELinux policy representation, thus limiting system interactivity. The Sensitivity Label Translation system of the invention provides a method to perform such a translation, thereby addressing a significant need in the art.